Circumcised with Bamboo Sticks: All in a Day's Work

by Liz Langley

Some journalists really will do anything for a scoop.

Now this is a news clip. Journalist Simon Eroro of Papua, New Guinea agreed to undergo a circumcision— done with bamboo sticks, as part of a “cleansing ceremony” — in order to get the story on a group of rebels which he’d crossed rivers and jungles to visit. He got the interviews and his work for the Post-Courier newspaper “exposed the cross-border movements of Free West Papua militants from Indonesia to New Guinea,” the Telegraph reports (probably with considerably less hassle). His reporting lead to a “major police operation to tighten the borders.”

“The Free West Papua rebels have been fighting for the independence of the remote Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua. Journalists are rarely granted access to the region. Some of the rebels still closely observe traditional customs, including wearing penis gourds, with the sizes varying according to status,” the Telegraph says.

Eroro won the award for Scoop of the Year, an in-house award from News Limited, the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.